CJ Affiliate or formerly known as Commission Junction is one of the oldest online advertising company owned by ValueClick, which operates in the affiliate industry market. As such, not having a CJ Affiliate review on our site is absolutely unacceptable.
CJ Affiliate is the largest affiliate networks in the USA which also operates worldwide. Amongst the top 500 retailers that use third party affiliate marketing software, 62% of them are powered by CJ Affiliate review.
CJ Affiliate review still works strong even today, but several people are confused whether this site’s claims are true or if they mean nothing at all. Hence, we decided to find out more about this website and give you a detailed review of it so that you can make an informed decision going forward.
CJ Affiliate Review: What Is It?
CJ Affiliate by Conversant is an affiliate network with over two decades of experience. This is an affiliate marketplace wherein you can find thousands and thousands of products to promote and then earn money.
This is a global affiliate marketplace and is one of the best solutions for independent blog owners to connect with affiliate programs offered by thousands of online brands.
One of the best things about CJ Affiliate is that you do not need any exclusive training in order to learn using the CJ network. All you need to do is simply sign up for free and then start exploring the dashboard.
Once you have signed up on this network, make sure you have completed your profile so that you get approved quickly for any affiliate program on the CJ network. After approval, you can click on the “get links“.
Then, you can either look for your target affiliate program via the Advertiser list or you can simply click on the general categories to go through all the new affiliate programs.
Signing Up
To get started with CJ Affiliate, all you need to do is head to their website and scroll down to find the sign-up section. You will find two different sign-up options: one for publishers and another for advertisers.
Signing up does not require you to pay for anything. You will need to click on the Publishers as the Advertisers is typically for companies looking to add their program on to the CJ network.
As a publisher for CJ, you will earn commissions by partnering with advertisers to advertise and earn commissions. It is important to note that you need to have a website before you apply for CJ. Once approved as a CJ Affiliate, you can begin using the affiliate network and find the affiliate programs within it.
You can search manually if you know the company you want to work with or search by affiliate category, which is ideal if you don’t know what company you want to work for.
Advantages
For someone who is just beginning with affiliate marketing, CJ is a logical place to go to. As mentioned, signing up as a publisher is instant and free. Some top advantages of becoming a CJ affiliate include:
- Wide Range of Offers: While CJ does have several merchants, it also offers a wide range of offers. Besides the classic pay-per-sale deal, you will also find pay-per-call or pay-per-lead offers.
- Highly Established Merchants: One of the best things about CJ is you will find several merchants which are highly established. These also include companies belonging to the Fortune-500 list.
- Tons of Affiliate Banners: Every merchant will come with tons of marketing materials and banners hosted by CJ. Each of these banners also displays the same.
- Individual Product Links: You will be able to link directly to individual products, but this may not apply to every merchant. Linking directly to a product, as several affiliates know, is one of the most effective ways to make an affiliate sale. There are performance stats to refer to so that you can opt to use only banners which are doing well.
- Centralized Affiliate Payments: All the commissions made are paid by CJ themselves and not the individual merchants. This ensures that all your paychecks are secured and predictable.
Here are some testimonials to back up some of its advantages:
Disadvantages
CJ Affiliate may definitely be one of the oldest and largest affiliate networks at present. It comes with quite a few advantages, but over the years, people have faced quite a few issues with this network. Let us list some of them below.
- Advertiser Application Process: Unlike sites like ClickBank wherein you are free to promote any affiliate program you like, in CJ you need to apply to individual merchants manually and even agree to each of their terms of service.
- Closing Down Accounts: CJ is known to close down any inactive affiliate accounts. While this may seem appropriate, there have been complaints from people who claim that CJ randomly closed down their account even when they were making regular commissions. Furthermore, they did not respond to emails either.
- Old-School Conversion Tracking: We found that all of CJ’s stats and the reporting features are quite outdated. The affiliates deserve much more conversion data than only the TID tracking and commission date.
- Temporary Advertiser Deactivation: Often there tends to be some sort of billing issues between the merchants and CJ. If this does happen, you will constantly find yourself getting “Advertiser Deactivated” notifications. This can get annoying, especially when you have chosen that particular merchant. Once the advertiser is deactivated, you will no longer get any commissions for that merchant.
Here are some negative testimonials about CJ:
Is CJ Affiliate a Scam?
Ending this CJ Affiliate review, let’s answer the main question: “Is CJ Affiliate a scam or not?” Well, it is not. This is definitely a legit network and it does work. In fact, people have been using it for years and have made an income out of it.
Nonetheless, there are some glaring issues you just cannot ignore and you have to work through. We would not say that you should not try out CJ, but you should do so with caution. The best thing about it is that you do get access to many products to promote.